Dammit. What were they thinking?
Naiya dried her hands in the tiny washroom behind the clubhouse kitchen. She was certain the hand towel was supposed to be white, and not dark gray, and likely had never seen the inside of a washing machine, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Holt was waiting for her outside. After that fiasco of a reunion he’d declared their visit over and he was impatient to leave.
Poor Holt. He hadn’t wanted to come to the clubhouse, and now she knew why. Although his brothers had been genuinely pleased to see him, there had been an unmistakable tension in the air. What had Jagger been thinking when he suggested Holt sit in on their meeting the day he returned? And would Gunner really have threatened to kick his ass after what he’d been through? And the whole damn fiasco with the cut? Sensitivity was clearly not a requirement for the Sinner’s Tribe MC. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. Holt needed support and understanding. Instead he got … bikers. Acting as bikers did.
Tank, Jagger, and Zane, the dark, brooding VP, were talking in the hallway outside the restroom, but their conversation stopped when she tried to slip past to get to the front door.
“Did he tell you what happened to him?” Tank asked.
“I saw what happened to him.” Naiya bit out her words. “I was in the dungeon. They had him chained to the wall. He could barely walk or talk. He was starved and dehydrated, and his lips were cracked from thirst. After we got out, I called my friend Ally to come and look after him. She’s a nurse. She’d never seen anyone treated so badly. You name a weapon, and he’d been beaten with it: whips, chains, canes, blades. There wasn’t a part of him unmarked. She thought he’d had bones broken that had healed on their own. He had infected wounds, and some that needed stitches.” She drew in a ragged breath. “But that was just outside. Inside … I don’t know because I didn’t know him before, but he’s changed since we first escaped. He’s … harder now.”
“Tank says he has his cut, but he won’t wear it,” Jagger said, clearly inviting her to explain.
“No.” Naiya pressed her lips together. Although she was willing to share the details about Holt’s injuries so the Sinners would understand some of what he’d been through, she didn’t feel it was her right to share Holt’s reasons for not wearing the cut. She didn’t owe anything to the Sinners, and after the way they’d treated him, she was even less inclined to be forthcoming.
Jagger lifted an eyebrow in censure, and Tank rushed in with an explanation she didn’t need.
“Until he puts on the cut, he’s not really back.”
“He may never be back,” Jagger said quietly. “I know men in the army who went through what he went through. They never got over it. And if they did, they weren’t the same.”
“What’s your role in all this?” Dark and dangerous looking, Zane scowled. “Why is Viper after you?”
Naiya twisted her ring around her finger. “My mother owed him a debt. He decided to collect it from me. He kidnapped me from my mother’s funeral and took me to his clubhouse. He—” Her throat tightened and she clenched her hand into a fist. “He dragged me to his room and I stabbed him in the chest with a pen knife to fight him off. He threw me in the dungeon to teach me a lesson. At first, I thought if I helped Holt, he would take me to you, and you would owe me a debt and protect me from Viper. I didn’t know he was going to go after you for abandoning him. When I got to know him better though, I realized his heart wasn’t in it. Revenge was a crutch, at least as regards the Sinners. But now that he knows the truth, he’s got only revenge against Viper to keep him going.”
“He can’t go after Viper on his own,” Jagger said. “Viper knows we’ve got a mark on him. He’s tightened his security. He never goes anywhere without at least eight bodyguards. The bike rally coming up is our best chance to get close to him, but we need to work as a team.”
Naiya shook her head. “Holt needs his revenge.”
“He’ll have it, but not alone.” Jagger gave her a measured look. “I don’t want to lose him again, and we’ve put a lot of time and planning into the hit on Viper at the rally. We need you to keep an eye on him. Let us know what he has planned so we can stop him if we need to.”
Betray Holt? After he’d spent three months feeling betrayed? When he felt like he had no one to trust? Take away the one thing he had lived for all those months? The one thing Naiya secretly desired but had never been able to admit, not even to herself?
She stared at Jagger, stiffened her spine. Aside from Viper, he was probably the most intimidating man she’d ever met, and only a few weeks ago she would have agreed to his demands, desperate to get away and hide, afraid to stand up for what or who she believed in.
“I won’t betray him. He needs this. And he needs to do it his way.”